Fury (1936)

June 6, 1936

' Fury,' a Dramatic Indictment of Lynch Law, Opens at the Capitol -- Other New Pictures.

By FRANK S. NUGENT

Published: June 6, 1936

Let it be said at once: "Fury," which came to the Capitol yesterday, is the finest original drama the screen has provided this year. Its theme is mob violence, its approach is coldly judicial, its treatment as relentless and unsparing as the lynching it portrays. A mature, sober and penetrating investigation of a national blight, it has been brilliantly directed by the Viennese Fritz Lang, bitingly written by Norman Krasna and Bartlett Cormack and splendidly performed by Spencer Tracy, Sylvia Sidney, Walter Abel, Edward Ellis and many others. It should appeal mightily to those of you who look to Hollywood—forlornly most of the time—for something better than superficial, dream-world romance.

Mr. Krasna's story, elemental in its simplicity, is yet an encyclopedia of lynch law. It permits us to study this great American institution from every angle and from points of vantage provided by Mr. Lang's unquestionable camera genius. We see it as the victim sees it, as the mob sees it, as the community sees it, as the law sees it, as the public sees it. We see a lynching, its prelude and its aftermath, in all its cold horror, its hypocrisy and its cruel stupidity; and it disgusts us and fills us with shame for what has been done, and is being done, in our constitutional republic.

The case of Joe Wilson is fictitious and it is laid in a non-existent Midwestern city; yet the case of Joe Wilson is typical of all lynch outrages, wherever committed. The Joe Wilson of "Fury" is a gasoline station owner, driving happily down a byroad to meet the girl he plans to marry. It is a day they have awaited for years. The world is bright, men are good, justice prevails. Then a deputy sheriff, with leveled shotgun, stops the car. "Weren't letting grass grow under yer tires, were ye? Illinois license plates, too!" The tragedy has begun.

There had been a kidnapping. A few shreds of evidence are enough to lodge Wilson in the county jail at Strand, held for further investigation. Rumors spread through the town. The knaves and the righteous, the loafers and the business men, convert Wilson from suspect to swaggering criminal. The mob storms the jail, beats down the Sheriff and his deputies, and, unable to reach the prisoner, sets the building afire. Wilson's sweetheart arrives in time to see him being burned alive as men gape, as a woman holds her child aloft to get a better view, as an ogling youth pauses between bites of a frankfurter and roll. Call this the prelude.

"Fury" has been objective so far; now it goes beneath the surface of the news reports and considers a lynching in terms of community reaction and the law. Strand returns to righteousness. The responsible business men agree that it was a "Community, not an Individual thing"; they pledge themselves to cover up. The women quote the minister: "Some things are better forgiven and forgotten." But the law, handicapped by hypocrisy and perjury, moves to punish the mob leaders; twenty-two citizens of Strand go on trial for their lives; and Joe Wilson, who had miraculously escaped, sits by his radio and hears them perjure themselves. His enjoyment is keen and his course of action clear to him: he is legally dead, legally murdered; he will let his legal killers stand a legal trial, get a legal sentence and a legal death.

The trial proceeds and its outcome will not be divulged here; but you will see in it a re-enactment of hundreds of lynch trials that have been held, of thousands that might have been held to determine the guilt of the men and women responsible for the 6,000-odd lynchings in this country during the last forty-nine years. And it is a trial scene written in acid, a searing commentary upon a national disregard for the due processes of law and order that finds flower in such organizations as Detroit's Black Legion and kindred "100 per cent American" societies.

This has been a completely enthusiastic report, and such was our intention. Hollywood rarely bothers with themes bearing any relation to significant aspects of contemporary life. When it does, in most cases, its approach is timid, uncertain or misdirected. "Fury" is direct, forthright and vehement. That it is brilliantly executed as well makes it all the more notable.

Cinematically it is almost flawless. Mr. Lang, director of "Metropolis" and "M," had been in Hollywood almost two years before Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer permitted him to make this picture. It was worth waiting for. Nor can we fail to salute its cast for their sincere and utterly convincing performances. Mr. Tracy's bitter portrait of Joe Wilson, Miss Sidney's moving portrayal of the sweetheart, Walter Abel's District Attorney, Edward Ellis as the Sheriff, Bruce Cabot as the town bully, Frank Albertson and George Walcott as Wilson's brothers, Walter Brennan's loose-mouthed rustic deputy—all of these, and others, have a share in the glory of "Fury."